Google avoids Chinese take-away

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Google has updated its blog post regarding its censorship row in China with the simple sentence:

"We are very pleased that the government has renewed our ICP license and we look forward to continuing to provide web search and local products to our users in China".

So that's cleared that up then. Or has it?

What about Google's threat back in January that it would quit the country as a result of cyber-attacks on Gmail accounts of human rights' activists, or its harsh criticism of the way the Chinese government censors the web for its public?

"We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China".

Has the situation changed in China with only Google finding out? Or has Google wobbled on its original threat because of the huge economic potential that China may present to it?

After all, Google is still censoring its search results via Google.cn.

It was recently redirecting all Google.cn traffic through to Google.hk, which provided uncensored results in a recognisable language for Chinese surfers. Now that procedure has changed and Google.cn simply provides a link to Google.hk instead.

How long until the Chinese government ask Google to remove that option though?

And going by Google's recent backtracking, it will probably do as it's told.